• Some additional thoughts

    1. Yes campaigners should focus on why they failed to persuade a clear majority. Blaming the defeat on a biased media and No campaign 'lies' obscures the fact that the SNP failed to give credible answers on currency and the EU.
    2. If the focus of many Yes campaigners was to defeat Neo-Liberal policies, focusing energy on 'destroying' Labour is a waste of time. I'm sure the Conservatives will enjoy it though.
    3. One policy held up as an example of an imposition on Scotland by Westminster is the bedroom tax. It effects approximately 88,000 households in Scotland at a cost of £50MN, a fractional proportion of the Scottish block grant of circa £30BN. Given the SNP have the ability to manage welfare policy, why haven't they reversed it? In addition, why have they never used any of the tax powers available to them, for example, the ability to vary income tax rates by 3 percent? The only significant divergence in spending between the SNP and Westminster comes on public services, not on welfare.
    4. Another point of rhetoric is food banks. First, it's worth noting that there are more food banks in London than there are in the whole of Scotland. Scotland doesn't have a unique claim on inequality. Second, the Trussell Trust, an organisation headquartered in Salisbury, has done more than any other organisation to tackle short term hunger across the UK. Are there any comparable organisations founded in Scotland?

    Well done to the SNP for rolling all these emotive issues up with the false premise that they could be tackled by independence. I can see why that was persuasive to many who were having an awakening of political conscience. The probable tragedy is that their energies will now be dissipated by divisiveness and recrimination, rather than tackling the real issues in hand.

  • I'll leave you to advise Yes voters on strategy, for point three (as much as it's nice you acknowledge that every time the tories think up an impracticable, bullshit policy the Scottish government need to find the cash to compensate out of a fixed budget or use their limited tax raising powers to compensate) they clearly don't have the power to reverse Westminster declared changes to housing benefits or they would do that... Your 'point of rhetoric ' in number four again, is a perverse reversal of the issues at hand of both Scottish sovereignty and self-determination to a 'but what about us' from the English. Why not devote your energy to asking why, in the richest city in the Uk there are so many foodbanks and leave the Scots to tackle their own issues, or else spend generations campaigning for English political reform in the way tge Scots have for their own before the what about me-isms. It's not particularly strong logic to propose that London having x foodbanks means that Glasgow having fewer is less unequal or richer, is it? And again, it's disingenuous to hold the Scottish parliament to a higher standard than your own, when at least people here are mobilised to tackle the root structural political and economic causes of the poverty they see around them without resorting to pulling a UKIP and blaming the forrins.

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